n proportion to
the similarity of products and of methods of production. Germany, like
the United States, is a new-comer in international industry, pushing
and aggressive. More scientific and better organised than we, she
possesses far more meagre resources. We both have trusts or cartels,
and both manufacture huge quantities of cheap, standardised products.
Our competition therefore is of the keenest, and is likely to grow more
intense, if, as seems likely, Germany recovers from the effects of this
war. Less keen is our competition with Great Britain. Like an old
firm, grown {62} rich and conservative, Great Britain is not pushing,
not scientific, not well organised. We are gaining on her in those
branches of manufacture which permit standardisation and production in
huge quantities, and have no hope, and but little wish, of competing in
articles of high finish and therefore high labour cost. With France we
compete still less, since much of her export trade is in articles of
taste and luxury, in which we are hopelessly inferior.[2]

In this battle for the world market, the United States has the
disadvantage of coming late and of being intellectually unprepared. On
the other hand, not only have we superior natural resources, but also
the advantage that to us success is not vital. Whatever trade we gain
is a mere improvement of a situation already good. We are playing "on
velvet." Finally, like Germany, we have the advantage of large scale
production by strong corporations working with what is practically a
bounty upon exports. Because of their control of a protected home
market, our great corporations can make their sales at home cover all
initial and constant costs, and as these costs need not be applied to
exports, are able to sell goods cheaper in Rio Janeiro or Lima than in
Chicago or New York. They are able to "dump" their surplus goods.[3]

The opening of the Panama Canal cannot but increase the competition of
the United States especially with the nations bordering on the Pacific
Ocean. From 1897-1901 to 1907-11 the average annual exports from the
United States to these Pacific countries (Mexico, Central America and
Columbia, the remaining West Coast of {63} South America, China, Japan,
the Philippines and British Australasia) increased from 104.2 millions
to 200.2 millions, a growth of 92.1 per cent., while the export from
Germany increased 81.0 per cent. and from the United Kingdom only 51.7
per c